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Tuesday, May 23, 2017

OTTAWA — No one was more shocked than Ottawa Fury coach Paul Dalglish.

Ryan Williams and Sito Seoane scored second-half goals as Ottawa rallied to a 2-1 win on Tuesday in their first-ever meeting with Toronto FC in the first leg of the semifinal for the Voyageurs Cup, Canada's soccer club championship.

"This shouldn't have happened," said Dalgish. "There's no way we should have to beat the best team ever in Canada, (The players) have to savour it."

The second leg will be played at Toronto's BMO Field on May 31 with the winner moving on to the Canadian championship against the winner of the other semifinal between the Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps.

"We've come up against a fantastic team," said Dalgish. "In my opinion, Toronto is the best ever Canadian team. It was a big, gig proposition for us to take them on and I thought the guys were fantastic.

"They implemented everything we asked them to as a coaching staff fantastically well."

After falling behind Toronto 1-0 on a goal from Benoit Cheyrou, the Fury started the second half much better than the first and as a result of their tenacity got a free kick in the 57th minute following a hand ball by Toronto FC.

Williams took the kick and while TFC 'keeper Clint Irwin dove to his right, Williams placed his shot into the corner of the goal to Irwin's left.

Irwin once again dove to his right in the 64th minute but this time was able to knock away a shot from Ottawa forward Seoane, who looked destined to give the Fury the lead.

That lead did come in the 72nd minute as Seoane drove around a TFC defender during a massive scramble and hooked a shot past Irwin for a 2-1 advantage.

"Congratulations to Ottawa. I thought they played hard in the second half they came out with a little bit different intensity and were competing quicker for balls," said Toronto FC coach Greg Vanney. "Credit to them they stuck with it and got a couple of goals out of it.

"It's a wakeup call for us that we have to play at our best and not take things for granted and we're going to have to perform if we're going to get ourselves through this round."

After advancing past the opening round for a second consecutive year by defeating NASL side FC Edmonton, the Fury of the United Soccer League were unable to match the calibre of pace set by the MLS team from Toronto early on.

Toronto FC tops the Eastern Conference in MLS play with seven wins and five draws in 13 games while Ottawa sits 11th in the USL Eastern Conference standings with a 2-3-3 record.

In opening their defence of the Voyageurs Cup as Canadian champions, Toronto FC five of their regular starters on the bench to start the game Tuesday, including midfielder Michael Bradley, who has started all 13 of TFC's games this season.

In addition, Mitch Taintor, who captains TFC II in the United Soccer League, was called up and started for the top club Tuesday. Also called up was forward Jordan Hamilton, from Toronto, who played 90 minutes Tuesday.

"We lost the battle tonight but there's a second leg in Toronto and we have the away goal, so we'll go and play in front of our fans," Hamilton said.

TFC had nearly 70 per cent of the possession time in the opening half and directed four shots towards Ottawa's goal.

In the 35th minute Cheyrou split a pair of Fury defenders just inside the penalty box and opened the scoring as he beat Irving in the Ottawa goal for a 1-0 TFC lead.

That changed in the second half though as the field seemed to tilt in favour of the Fury

Note to readers: This is a corrected version of an earlier story. Ottawa Fury's head coach is named Paul Dalglish, not Paul Dagish.